1. What can you tell me about the early history and founding of Gardena?

The first Spanish settlers arrived in the area in the late 1700s. Nearly all
the territory of what would become Gardena Valley was part of Rancho San Pedro,
43,119 acres that Juan Jose Dominguez received between 1784 and 1800 for his
military service. This property-the third Spanish land grant and one of the
largest made-was used for raising first sheep and then cattle.

Later the site became part of Rancho San Pedro,
with the patent confirming the land grant signed by President James Buchanan
in December 1858. After the Civil War, Union Army Major General William Starke
Rosecrans in 1869 bought 16,000 acres for $2.50 an acre, a low price possibly
because the land was deemed worthless for lack of a spring for water. The
ranch, dubbed "Rosecrans Rancho," was bordered by what later was Florence
Avenue on the north, Redondo Beach Boulevard on the south, Central Avenue on
the east, and Arlington Avenue on the west.

The Rosecrans property was sold in the early 1870s for $50 an acre and then
broken into parcels. One of those became the 800-acre McDonald Ranch, whose
ranch buildings stood at today's intersection of 161st and Figueroa streets.
Gardena proper began in 1887 when the Pomeroy & Harrison real estate developers
subdivided the ranch, and-anticipating that the coming of the Los Angeles and
Redondo Railway would stretch south on Figueroa Street-planned the new
community with the ranch buildings at its two-acre center.

As it turned out, the real estate people were proved wrong. The railway,
which opened in April 1890, was built through Gardena-but rather than going
down Figueroa Street it followed Vermont Avenue. Undaunted, the residents of
the fledgling community moved themselves and the town's core from its original
location to the intersection of Vermont and 166th streets in 1889, the year
before the railroad opened in April 1890-and that's where Gardena's modern-day
center still is.

Gardena, named by the daughter of early settler Spencer
Thorpe in honor of being a "garden spot," was incorporated on September 11,
1930 with the blending of rural communities Moneta and Strawberry Park. Its
new municipal status represented a response to the so-called "Alondra Park
incident" that threatened to burden taxpayers with an enormous debt. More
information about the founding and early years of Gardena can be found in
the following sources:

Rosecrans, a Major General in the Union Army, was born in Ohio in 1819 of
Dutch descendants who had moved first to Pennsylvania before heading to Ohio.
An 1842 graduate of West Point, Rosecrans after the Civil War came to Southern
California to invest in land and in 1869 bought 16,000 acres of what became
"Rosecrans Rancho" for $2.50 an acre. Though this 25-square-mile tract of land
was flat and fertile, it was considered to be of no value, possibly because it
lacked springs. However, it was from Rosecrans' property that Gardena
ultimately emerged.

After relocating to California, the Rosecrans was often away on business.
In 1868 he was appointed U.S. Minister to Mexico; in 1869 he became one of
the incorporators of the Southern Pacific Railroad; he was elected to the
United States Congress in 1881 and again in 1884; and in 1885 he was appointed
Registrar of the U.S. Treasury. He retired in 1893 and died near Redondo in
1898. His son, Carl F. Rosecrans, became owner of Rosecrans Rancho and was
the major catalyst for the building of the San Pedro rail line through Gardena
between Los Angeles and San Pedro. More information about William Starke
Rosecrans can be found in the following sources:

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3. What can you tell me about Gardena's agriculture?
Gardena was dubbed "Berryland" for its acres of strawberries as well as
raspberries and blackberries grown year-round a century ago. The community
owes its early reputation as a farming community to the Dominguez Slough,
whose waters made Gardena an oasis amid an otherwise barren landscape. Among
the crops grown there besides berries were tomatoes, alfalfa, and barley.
More information about Gardena's agriculture can be found in the following
sources:

Railroads put Gardena on the map near the end of the nineteenth century,
after the Los Angeles area underwent a tremendous real-estate boom in 1886
and 1887. The Gardena Valley's first railway line, which ran from Agricultural
Park in Los Angeles to the townsite of Rosecrans (roughly halfway to Redondo),
was the "Rosecrans Rapid Transit Railway," built in 1887 by real estate men
Emil D'Artois and Walter L. Webb. After a year of intermittent rail service,
they discontinued rail travel in the summer of 1888; by the following spring,
the railroad was bought and operated by the Redondo Railway Company. The
company wasted no time building a roughly 20-mile rail line between Los Angeles
and Redondo, which opened for business April 11, 1890, thus prompting the
moving of downtown Gardena from Figueroa Street to Vermont Avenue.

The early twentieth century was a time of great passenger railroad growth in
and around Gardena. In 1903, a line connecting Los Angeles and San Pedro via
Gardena started operating; it was built by the California Pacific Railway
Company, which the following year was bought by the Los Angeles Inter-Urban
Railway Company. In 1907, the Los Angeles and Redondo Railway (formerly the
Redondo Railway Company) built and started a Moneta Avenue line between East
Athens and Strawberry Park.

And in 1912, the Pacific Electric Railway Company completed a line through Gardena between Watts and the Redondo Beach Line.
By then, Pacific Electric had also acquired the other lines through
consolidation. In 1940, Pacific Electric's rail passenger service through
Gardena ended and was replaced by buses. Today, the only trains passing through
Gardena are diesel freight cars. More information about railroads and Gardena
can be found in the following sources:

5. What can you tell me about the history of Japanese Americans in Gardena?

Japanese immigrants were a key part of Gardena's farm community during
Gardena's early years, and their influence remains visible today. In 1911,
the Japanese Association founded the Moneta Japanese Institute at the
intersection of New York and Market streets, and with donations from the
Japanese-American community paid for the lots, a school house, and teachers'
living quarters. Five years later the Parents' Association founded the Gardena
Japanese School. Gardena's Japanese population was, along with 110,000 other
people of Japanese ancestry, moved from Pacific coastal communities to
relocation camps in the middle of the United States in the spring and summer
of 1942 as a military security measure during World War II. More information
about California's early Japanese-American population can be found in the
following sources:

The Dominguez Slough was a serpentine inland freshwater lake created from
rainwater runoff, and which made Gardena a well-known "garden spot" in
Southern California. The slough wound its way to San Pedro's mud flats and
for many years in Gardena's early history provided an excellent recreational
destination for hunters, fishermen, young boys wanting to play in the great
outdoors, and people on vacation who swam and boated there. During the 1920s
the slough was drained and filled in order to extend Vermont Avenue in Gardena.
More information about the Dominguez slough can be found in the following
sources:

Website Links:

Print Sources:

7. What can you tell me about the Strawberry Festival and the history of strawberries in Gardena?

Gardena was once known as "Berryland" for its production of strawberries as
well as raspberries and blackberries, and had a reputation as the berry capital
of Southern California. It was especially well-known for its annual
Strawberry Day Festival and parade held each May, when each visitor received
a free box of strawberries. The community of Strawberry Park also evolved
north of Gardena. The berry industry fell off during World War I as other
crops were cultivated for the war effort, and afterward the community's
development grew to eclipse much of the former farmland on which the berries
were grown. Much of the land on which the berries were grown was leased by
Japanese immigrants who cultivated the strawberries with artesian well water.
More information about Gardena's strawberry production can be found in the
following sources:

Based on archaeological digs in and around Gardena, Gabrielino (Tongva)
Indians hunted and fished near Gardena, though they did not live there.
Numerous skeletons of Native Americans have been dug up on a small mound on
the southern edge of the Dominguez Slough, and based on shells found there
and the burial site location, the remains are thought to be those of the
prehistoric Tongva culture, considered the wealthiest, most dominant, and
most progressive of all the Shoshoneans. They were not strictly local Indians,
but rather lived as well in Los Angeles County south of Sierra Madre, the
Santa Catalina and San Clemente islands, and half of Orange County. More
information about the Gabrielino (Tongva) people in general and in Gardena
can be found in the following sources:

The Gardena City Clerk's Office has a photograph album donated by Sumitomo
Bank containing historic photographs of Gardena. Several historic Gardena
photographs are also available at the Seaver Center for Western History
Research at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and at the Los
Angeles Public Library.

10. Do you have any information about the Gardena High School art collection?

The Gardena High School art collection began as the gift of a single painting
to the high school by the senior class of 1919. The practice of purchasing a
painting for Gardena High School as a senior class gift continued in subsequent
years, until the school became the owner of a major collection of plein air
paintings by many of California's greatest Impressionist painters. Eventually,
however, the collection languished under substandard storage conditions and
was in danger of being lost. A grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation prevented
this from happening. CSU Dominguez Hills directed the restoration of the
collection and organized an exhibit that opened at the University Art Gallery
in January 1999.